McCain hits the trail like it's 2008

John McCain is barnstorming the country like he’s running for president all over again.

Of course, the prize is different this time: The Senate majority, and with it a chance for the decorated Vietnam War hero to become chairman of his beloved Armed Services Committee — a post his Senate predecessor, the late Barry Goldwater, once held.

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“I think it would be a fulfillment of a lifelong dream that I’ve had. Barry Goldwater was also chairman — he also lost a presidential election,” McCain told POLITICO in a phone interview Thursday, cracking himself up while getting off a plane in Grand Forks, N.D., where he planned to stump with Senate hopeful Rick Berg.

“My family comes from a long line of military. I have a son who is a Navy pilot also. My family goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War,” McCain added. “And to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee would be a wondrous thing for not only me personally but also for my family.”

McCain, who turned 76 in August, has been traveling the country — from Nevada and Montana to Indiana and Florida — working to elect fellow Republicans in hopes of ousting Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democrats from power. He recently held fundraisers for two candidates in nail-biter races: former Gov. Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock (before the state treasurer’s now-infamous “rape” remarks).

On Friday, the still-spry McCain will join Sen. Mike Johanns and Rep. Lee Terry at an airplane hangar in Omaha to campaign for Deb Fischer, the GOP Senate nominee in Nebraska, a state McCain carried by 15 points in 2008. Then he’ll hop on a plane this weekend for events with Josh Mandel in Ohio and George Allen in northern Virginia.

“Frankly, there has never been a more dedicated campaigner on behalf of Republicans than John McCain, and the schedule he maintains would kill men half his age,” said Phoenix-based GOP strategist Kurt Davis, who co-chaired McCain’s Arizona campaign in 2008.

In the Grand Canyon State, McCain has held a conference call with reporters and cut a TV spot ripping Democrat Richard Carmona for running an ad using decade-old video footage of McCain and retiring Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl heaping praise on the former U.S. surgeon general. McCain and Kyl, who back Carmona’s GOP rival Jeff Flake, have called the ad “deceitful.”

And McCain, a retired Navy pilot who spent more than five years as a Vietcong prisoner of war, lent some of his military credentials to vulnerable Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) this summer when he presided over a pinning ceremony at the Capitol promoting Brown to colonel in the Army National Guard. He has also done Bay State fundraisers and campaign events for Brown, who’s facing an uphill race against Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

On Wednesday, the Arizona senator did a series of events and media interviews in Billings to boost Montana Republican Denny Rehberg. The state’s lone congressman is trying to unseat first-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in one of the closest Senate races in the nation.

“I hope the voters understand that I believe in Denny Rehberg, but I also believe that we need to have control of the Senate,” McCain told KTVQ-TV in Billings. “Because the last four years under Harry Reid and Jon Tester have been an abysmal failure.”

It was a message he repeated to POLITICO from chilly Grand Forks.

It’s about “the agenda, the agenda, the agenda, setting the agenda,” McCain said. “Harry Reid has obviously abused that authority of the majority leader in more ways than any of us have ever seen. Secondly, the investigative powers that are involved.”